Mixing a Full Setlist on the Behringer WING (Plus Some Mixing Tips)

I made this for our volunteers.

New people on the audio team have usually never watched somebody mix a full service. They get handed a board and a service order and told to keep it balanced. So I recorded myself mixing a whole set, start to finish, so they could see what it actually looks like.

If you're training people on your own team, this is a format worth stealing.

How I set it up

I played back a recording of a Sunday service and mixed it live off that.

I used my in-ears so what you hear in the video is close to what I was hearing. Room mics are in there too, so it feels like an actual service rather than a set of isolated tracks.

The set

King of Heaven

Led by Vocal 3. First thing I'm doing is balancing vocal against instruments. Vocals clear, not buried, not sitting on top of everything.

Blessed Assurance

Led by Vocal 1. I adjust the pad and set the tempo to match. Same goal, vocals blending without losing clarity.

King of Kings

Led by Vocal 3. Here I bring in keys and pads from the track to sit alongside the live band. That's what fills the sound out when you don't have every instrument on the platform.

Can't Get Enough

Led by Vocal 4. Pad levels again, plus blending the track elements against the live band so it reads as one thing instead of two.

What I'm actually doing the whole time

Small moves, constantly. Here's what my hands are on:

• Vocals. Present but not shouting. They should sit in the mix, not on it.
• Pads and ambience. Filling dead space, especially in the quiet parts between phrases.
• Dynamics. Pushing instruments forward when the song opens up, pulling back when it drops.
• Micro adjustments. Hands stay on the faders. It's a lot of tiny corrections, not a few big ones.

The part worth teaching your team

Get a solid foundation set before the service, then make small continuous adjustments during it.

New volunteers tend to do the opposite. They set nothing up front, then make big panicked moves when something sounds wrong. Front-load the work and the live part gets a lot calmer.

Related reading

• The Best Live Stream Mix Our Small Church Has Ever Had
• Room Mics for Live Streaming: EQ and Setting It in the Mix
• Is the Behringer WING Volunteer Friendly?
• How to Train Church Media Volunteers

Recording a walkthrough like this once beats explaining it ten separate times. That idea is the core of the Church Notion System, where the training videos live inside the SOP your volunteer is already reading.